ITIL 4: The new syllabus
The ITIL® syllabus has been updated to reflect the way business is changing. One of the main elements of ITIL 4 is the idea of value co-creation - this being, value can only be achieved when the end customer is considered in the development of services/ features.
From this, the key components of the ITIL 4 framework are the ITIL service value system (SVS) and the four dimensions model.
The core components of the ITIL SVS are:
- The ITIL service value chain
- The ITIL practices
- The ITIL guiding principles
- Governance
- Continuous improvement
To ensure a holistic approach to service management, there are then four dimensions from which each component of the SVS should be considered:
- Organisation and people
- Information and technology
- Partners and suppliers
- Value streams and processes
Then we have the ITIL practices, which are grouped into three categories as follows:
- General management practices
- Service management practices
- Technical management practices
There are 34 practices* in total - 14 general management practices, 17 service management practices, and three technical management practices:
General management practices
- Architecture management
- Continual improvement
- Information security management
- Knowledge management
- Measurement and reporting
- Organisational change management
- Portfolio management
- Project management
- Relationship management
- Risk management
- Service financial management
- Strategy management
- Supplier management
- Workforce and talent management
Service management practices
- Availability management
- Business Analysis
- Capacity and performance management
- Change control
- Incident management
- IT asset management
- Monitoring and event management
- Problem management
- Release management
- Service catalogue management
- Service configuration management
- Service continuity management
- Service design
- Service desk
- Service level management
- Service request management
- Service validation and testing
Technical management practices
- Deployment management
- Infrastructure and platform management
- Software development and management
The Foundation level examines 15 of these practices - seven of which are examined in greater detail. The 15 examined practices at Foundation level are below. The seven in bold are the ones examined in more detail (9–15):
- Information security management
- Relationship management
- Supplier management
- IT asset management
- Monitoring and event management
- Release management
- Service configuration management
- Deployment management
- Continual improvement
- Change control
- Incident management
- Problem management
- Service request management
- Service desk
- Service level management
The last element of the syllabus is ITIL's guiding principles. A guiding principle is a recommendation that guides an organisation, regardless of circumstance whether that's changing goals, strategies, types of work or management structure.
- Focus on value
- Start where you are
- Progress iteratively with feedback
- Collaborate and promote visibility
- Think and work holistically
- Keep it simple and practical
- Optimise and automate